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Officials from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) agreed to meet with
community members at a Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC) public
meeting next week, following a massive protest Thursday. Roughly 200
parents and students gathered outside CPS headquarters to push back against impending budget cuts that threaten to strip critical resources from the
district.

During the protest, the Thomas Kelly High School
marching band’s drum line performed what may have been its final
concert, according to Thursday's participants who say the school’s music program faces an
uncertain future.

“How are they making things better,”
asked Anita Caballero, board president of the BPNC, who participated in the demonstration. “All of the schools
in the Chicago area are losing all of the things that make education
work, they’re losing teachers; they’re losing counselors; they’re losing
materials; and we can’t stand for it.”

Caballero
participated in Thursday’s BPNC-organized rally outside Urban
Partnership Bank, at 55 East Jackson Blvd., where Chicago Board of
Education President David Vitale serves as chairman. Led by the marching
band, demonstrators marched from a short demonstration at the bank to
CPS headquarters, at 125 South Clark St., to demand a meeting with CPS
CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett.

“Grades are going to drop,
classes are going to be overcrowded, and students are going to lose
things they love, like Kelly’s band, if they go through with these
budget cuts,” said Caballero, whose 18 year-old son graduated from Kelly
High last year.

CPS’ new per-student budgeting system provides that principals receive funding to spend at their discretion based on the number of students in their school.

The proposed budgets will
result in more than $94.3 million in cuts, affecting 155 of the district’s 681 schools, according to the education
coalition Raise Your Hand, which has aggregated data from CPS principals and local school councils.

Kelly
High is slated to lose roughly $4 million for the 2013-2014 academic year,
Raise Your Hand reports, resulting in 23 less teachers and the removal
of 10 non-teaching staff members. Protesters said the school’s orchestra
and band directors are two of the teachers who may not be there next
year.

“Our teachers are already spreading themselves so thin,” said Martha Valdez-Lontreras, a parent of two Nathan Davis Elementary School students. Davis stands to lose approximately $1 million next year, which translates to the loss of six teachers and three non-teaching staff positions.

Valdez-Lontreras said she can't imagine losing more teachers in the CPS district without it having a damaging effect on student education.

Here’s more from Valdez-Lontreras and Thursday’s protest:

In an attempt to soften the blow of district-wide budget cuts, the district announced Tuesday it would provide an early distribution
of $36 million to schools across the city. The funds, which derive from
supplemental general state aid, are not usually dispersed until schools
see their enrollment figures in the fall.

"These dollars,
which normally have been issued to schools in October or November of
every year, will better enable you to plan for your budget in advance of
the school year and to offset some of the negative impacts,"
Byrd-Bennett wrote in a letter to principals. "This will represent a
permanent reform to our budget process moving forward."

But
Patrick Brosnan, executive director of the BPNC, said CPS officials
have largely left parents and students in the dark during the budgeting
process.

“We want CPS to explain to us why we’re
experiencing these cuts,” said Patrick Brosnan, executive director of
BPNC, adding that he received a firm commitment today from CPS officials that
“department heads” would attend a BPNC community meeting scheduled for
July 17.

“If they make these cuts, what’s going to
happen,” he asked. “Crime goes up, education goes down, and we can’t
allow that to happen.”

Brosnan scoffed at the district’s
release of $36 million, saying it is not enough. He pointed out that
schools in his Brighton Park community on Chicago’s Southwest Side are
slated to collectively lose almost $7.5 million from their budgets.

“If
we keep pushing, they’re going to find the rest,” he said, regarding
the nearly $100 million Chicago’s schools stand to lose through the cuts.

Wendy
Katten, executive director for Raise Your Hand, agreed with Brosnan
that CPS has not been forthcoming to those most affected by the
district’s austerity moves.

“Why are we the ones that have to
figure out what’s happening,” asked Katten, who participated in
Thursday’s protest. “Why can’t CPS just be honest and tell students and
parents what’s going on in their schools?”

Katten added that the principal of her 10 year-old son’s school, Augustus Burley Elementary School, was informed that his institution is slated for roughly $600,000 in cuts, translating to the loss of five teachers.

“There
is a revenue issue in CPS, but they don’t have a good plan of how to
fix it and there are a lot of political games going on right now,” she
said.

Citing a $1 billion deficit, which the district largely attributes to the Illinois legislature’s failure to pass pension reform legislation, the Chicago Board of Education voted in May to shutter 50 schools across the city.

But
Katten, as well as hundreds of Thursday’s protesters, criticized Mayor
Rahm Emanuel’s plan to dedicate $55 million in TIF funds for a DePaul University basketball arena and hotel near McCormick Place.

“We
went on strike so we could get more resources, and our punishment for
striking is closing schools and denying us money we need,” said Shoneice
Reynolds, whose nine-year-old son, Asean Johnson, attends Marcus Moziah Garvey Elementary School, in Washington Heights on Chicago’s Far South Side.

Garvey
Elementary was originally included on CPS’ closure list earlier this
year, but was spared at the last minute. Johnson delivered a rousing
speech during a protest against the school closures on the eve of the Chicago Board of Education vote. CTU President Karen Lewis promised to vote for the third grader if he ran for mayor in 2025.

Raise Your Hand hasn’t yet determined how much of Garvey’s budget will be cut for the 2013-2014 school year.